#wewillgather

#wewillgather helped people to get together to do good things. The site was a joint project between Revolutionary Arts and Fresh Egg, funded with £100,000 from Nesta’s Innovation In Giving programme, and was inspired by August 2011’s #riotcleanup. It was launched in August 2012, exactly 12 months after #riotcleanup. The #wewillgather website was closed in May 2014, 21 months later.

#wewillgather was designed to wrap tightly around social media, and was built around (primarily) Twitter, but also used Facebook. Just by Tweeting, you could start a page for any community-based action, and that page helped you track people who’d pledged to help and manage the resources needed. And it helped people find good things to join in their local community, all pinned to a map.

#wewillgather was used by town centre managers, Rotary Clubs, independent shops, national cleanup campaigns, anarchists, the RSPB, small charities, happiness campaigners and most often, by committed local citizens.

The site itself had 1058 users, and #wewillgather has over 1000 Likes on Facebook and more than 1700 followers on Twitter. The #wewillgather website was used directly to start over 365 actions. It recruited at least 5475 volunteers, and unlocked over 8200 volunteer hours.

Many of the ideas people discovered through #wewillgather, and many of the collaborations started by people meeting with #wewillgather, have continued using other tools and platforms. The ripples from #wewillgather have really only just started.

While the website has been taken down, the Facebook page and the Twitter account are still active, providing a space to talk about good ways you can get involved in making the place where you live a little bit better.